Page 130 of In the Dark of the Past

“Thank you,” he said.

Outside, Atlas was with Evan. Myra was on her phone, making the quiet, necessary calls so the right people knew what had happened here tonight before morning changed the shape of things.

I looked at the empty chair.

Mark Vale had come to this cabin and made sure Evan could speak. He had confirmed what Eleanor’s murder required, had sent his love to his sister, and then made the only choice he felt he had left. He had recruited a thirteen-year-old boy and handed him a life he couldn’t put down. He had known that, and he had come here anyway, doing the last useful thing available to him.

I would carry the part where it hadn’t been enough. That would cost me something for a long time. I understood that, and I wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

But underneath it all, solid and cold and real, was that Grant had given the order. In person. Three days before. There were two witnesses. It was an unbroken chain from Eleanor Jenkins’ murder to the mayor of Maple Ridge.

Finn touched my arm. “We need to move.”

I took one last look at the room. The fire. The lamp. The broken water glass.

Then I zipped up my jacket and followed him out into the dark.

The creek was still running. The sky was still clear. Somewhere behind us in the backyard, Atlas had an arm around Evan’s shoulders, and Evan was letting him.

We had what we’d come for.

We had what Eleanor had died trying to build.

Now, we had to make it count.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Finn

I didn’t sleep much.

Not because of anything left to watch, by the time River and I left the cabin, Myra’s calls had already set things in motion. The county would handle what needed handling at Cade’s cabin. Atlas would stay. Cade would stay. That part wasn’t our job anymore, and one of the things I’d learned over my years in law enforcement was how to hand something off and trust the handoff.

I drove. River sat in the passenger seat and looked out the window at the logging road going dark behind us and didn’t say anything. I didn’t either, because some things needed the silence before they needed anything else.

We got to my house a little after two. I made herbal tea because coffee at that hour would have been a mistake, and River sat on the couch with her hands around the mug and her eyes going somewhere I couldn’t follow. After a while, she fell asleep right there, still sitting up. I put a blanket over her and didn’t wake her.

But I didn’t sleep. Because I kept running the case through its paces the way I’d always done with the ones that mattered, and this one had gotten so large and so personal and so interlocked that running it required more room than my brain had comfortable space for.

By five in the morning, I’d given up and moved to the kitchen. I made coffee this time and sat with the legal pad, going through what we had, taking it step by step from the beginning, the way my first training officer had taught me. It’s not what you feel. It’s what you can prove.

By six, I had a list that filled four pages.

The gap I’d been losing sleep over wasn’t there anymore. That was what I kept coming back to. Evan’s account and Vale’s confirmation had closed it. We had Grant’s direct order, in person, three days before, witnessed by at least five people. The chain ran all the way to the top. What I was working through now wasn’t whether we had enough. It was whether what we had would hold. Vale was dead. His confirmation had been verbal, in a private cabin, and while we had a recording, none of the witnesses really had official standing. Evan had been a Watcher operative for over a decade. A good defense attorney would come for both. I needed AG Solis to hear it and tell me it was enough.

I wrote Cole’s name at the top of the second page and put a box around it. Evan had named him last night. He was Grant’s other contact at the station and had transferred in fourteen months ago. I’d texted Atlas from the car on the way home. He had replied an hour later with a single word:

Handled.

Which meant the AG’s team had moved on Cole overnight, cleanly, and outside the department. That thread was at least closed.

I was still at the table when River appeared in the kitchen doorway, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. She now had her hair pulled back and the expression of someone who had also given up on sleep and didn’t want to discuss it.

“Coffee,” she said.

“Counter,” I said.

She poured a mug and came to look over my shoulder at the legal pad. She didn’t say anything for a moment, just read.